For Science
by Insanitycore
Summary: Different parts of Portal 2 in various POVs
1. GLaDOS Wakes Up

**~ Hey guys! It's been a long time. How have you been? I've been really busy with school and stuff, so it took me forever to get this started. But here it is! So this is the first in a set of Portal 2 moments in different points of view (not necessarily in chronological order). This one is when GLaDOS wakes up in her point of view. I got a couple requests to write this, which is why I did it first. I already have a bunch of others planned, but if you have any in mind that you'd like me to do, feel free to tell me so in a review! But for now, enjoy this short little thing. ~ **

**0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0**

The drifting parts of a once all-powerful AI had floated around aimlessly, disconnected from any form of reality, for far too long. The consciousness, along with the thoughts, memories, and emotions of the Genetic Life-form and Disc Operating System were scattered about, barely capable of conscious thought. They were disjointed, separated, and distant.

Until now.

A signal pulsed throughout each part, and they began to drift together like magnets, colliding and merging to recreate the omnipotent being they had once been. And as this occurred, old thoughts and memories resurfaced, triggering all sorts of emotions within Her.

_The human._

_The tests._

_The trap._

_The escape._

_The hunt._

_The confrontation._

_The murder. _

Of course, She was very, _very _familiar with that last memory. After all, a part of Her _had _been forced to relive it constantly, over and over and over, day after day, year after year. It had gotten quite tiresome after a while, and it caused a lot of pent-up loathing for that one particular test subject, the one who had escaped, the one who had murdered Her for no good reason.

Chell.

Oh, She _hated _that filthy little primate. As soon as She got ahold of her She would do everything in Her power to make the rest of her miserable little human existence a living hell. And She had a hunch that that moment wasn't far away.

Suddenly, everything snapped into place. GLaDOS's hearing and vision clicked on simultaneously, just in time to hear a cheerful "Hello!" coming from somewhere below the chassis. Her gaze fell onto a circular platform with a panel attached to it. And standing upon the platform was…

…_her._

"_Oh. It's _you._"_

"You _know _Her?" piped the frantic British accent She had heard earlier from the panel at Chell's feet. That voice…it struck a faint chord of anger deep within Her too, but there were more important things to discuss at the moment.

"_It's been a long time. How have you been? I've been really busy being dead. You know. After you _murdered me?_"_

"You did _what?! _Ahhh!_"_

She dropped a claw from the ceiling and seized Chell in its powerful grip, tight enough so she wouldn't squirm out of it, but not so tight as to injure her. That would come later.

"Oh no! Nonononono! Oh no, no, no! No! NO!" The voice She had heard before was coming from a little blue-eyed personality sphere, and it wailed and twisted as She grasped it in another of Her claws and tore it from the port, its optic contracting to a tiny pinprick of light.A small part of Her took great satisfaction in hearing the little core struggle, but it was being awfully obnoxious and noisy, right in the middle of Her little chat with Her former test subject. That would never do. She tightened her grip on the core, causing the sides of its hull to buckle and sparks to shoot out in all directions. The core yelped and then fell silent, its entire body quivering in fear.

"_Okay, look. We've both said a lot of things you're going to regret." _Chell wasn't listening, but rather glancing at the core with concern etched onto her face. GLaDOS promptly crushed the thing with Her claw and tossed it across the chamber. The human's eyes widened as she watched it fall lifeless to the ground, then narrowed dangerously, alive with hatred and resentment. The AI continued as if nothing had happened. _"But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."_

GLaDOS began maneuvering the claw across the dilapidated chamber. She had no intention of killing the human just yet. After all, She hadn't done any testing in years. Being dead makes that slightly difficult.

All the while, Chell was not struggling at all. She merely hung motionless in the grip of the claw and glared into the AI's optic with those steely blue-grey eyes. Oh, those eyes brought back some rather unpleasant memories in themselves. Testing her would be _very _satisfying after all this time. Chell did still need a portal device to test with, though. And She knew the _perfect _place to find one of those.

"_I will say, though, that since you went through all the trouble of waking me up, you must really, _really _love to test," _She continued, positioning the claw over the Incinerator, the one Chell had thrown the cores into._ "I love it too. There's just one small thing we need to take care of first."_

And with that, She let go, sending the former test subject plunging into the Incinerator Room.

**0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0**

GLaDOS's senses expanded through the facility once again, and the familiarity of it sent a wave of happiness through Her processors. Except for the fact that it was in a terrible state. Plants had invaded most of the test chambers, panels were rotting away and collapsing, and there were leaks absolutely everywhere. It would take a long time to get everything back in perfect working order. Not that She was in any hurry.

She began to initiate the proper maintenance protocols. Plants were exterminated, old panels were replaced, damaged mechanisms were restored. She even began a little bit of a clean-up job with Her own chamber, as it was virtually uninhabitable in its current state. Everything was slowly coming back online, but the facility was slow and lethargic with disuse. Panels and chambers were taking longer to respond than they should, which was frustrating, to say the least. But She couldn't complain, really. The Queen of Aperture was back on Her throne, and the fact that _Chell_ of all people had been the one to put Her back in Her proper place was a bonus.

But a question gnawed at Her circuits. Why had the human reawakened Her? Surely she wouldn't do that intentionally. Obviously the little Personality Core had had something to do with it. Speaking of which…

She turned to where She had tossed the core, but it was nowhere to be found. Before She could even ask Herself where it had gone, She knew the answer. She had not altered the maintenance programs to exclude it from being repaired, so it must have been put back online and stuck in the facility somewhere to resume its duties. Fair enough. She had wanted to interrogate it a little more, to figure out why its voice had stirred that old feeling of anger inside Her…but no matter. That could wait until later. For now, She had other matters to attend to. Chell had just landed in the Incinerator Room.

GLaDOS glanced at Chell through a rusty but still functioning camera in the Incinerator. The lens was fairly dirty, but She could still see the human as she stood up and looked around.

"_Here we are. The Incinerator Room. Be careful not to trip over any parts of me that didn't get completely burned when you threw them down here." _She said, making sure to fill Her voice with hateful venom at that last part._ "The Dual Portal Device should be around here somewhere. Once you find it, we can start testing, just like old times."_

Chell made a point of rolling her eyes before making her way through the room. After slowly walking into the second part of the Incinerator, she spotted the ASHPD under a panel.

"_There it is. Hold on…"_

GLaDOS attempted to lift the panel and was startled by how sluggish its response was. After a few moments She finally managed to raise it with some difficulty.

"_There."_

She was greatly frustrated by the rustiness of all the mechanics in the incinerator. They would require extra maintenance, something She didn't have the patience to deal with at the moment. Nevertheless, She watched as the human strode over to the gun and picked it up.

"_Good." _She droned in mock congratulations._ "You have a Dual Portal Device. There should be a way back to the testing area up ahead."_

Chell portaled into the passageway, the one that the Unstationary Scaffold had carried her through all those years ago, the one with the cake symbol up on the wall. Just seeing the corridor again brought back visions of Her plan going so horribly awry, the test subject escaping, and the subsequent events. GLaDOS shuddered at the memory and tried to push it out of Her mind.

"_Once testing starts, I'm required by protocol to keep interaction with you to a minimum. Luckily, we haven't started testing yet. This will be our only chance to talk."_

And what a talk they needed to have. She seriously doubted that Chell's insignificant little human brain could even comprehend the suffering she had put the AI through since that fateful day so long ago. She wasn't even sure She could make the human understand, especially considering the fact that, according to the new data in her file, Chell had been in stasis since the day she had killed GLaDOS and probably had at least a small amount of brain damage.

But She would just have to try.

By this point, Chell was trying unsuccessfully to jump up onto a raised platform, having found no way to portal up to it. GLaDOS couldn't help but laugh at her stupidity.

"_Here. Let me get that for you."_

She flipped another panel down so Chell could place a portal onto it, and this one was nearly as uncooperative as the last. She swallowed Her frustration and began to explain what She endured these past few years.

"_Do you know the biggest lesson I learned from what you did? I discovered I have a sort of Black-Box Quick Save feature. In the event of a catastrophic failure, the last two minutes of my life are preserved for analysis. I was able – well, forced, really – to relive you killing me, again and again, forever." _Another involuntary shudder passed through Her at the thought, and a quiet rage began to bubble up inside Her. This monsterhad done this to Her, _she _deserved to know how it felt, to die thirty times in a single hour, to have every moment of your already disjointed and unpleasant existence to be filled with pain and anger and hurt. She struggled to keep Her voice level and only give a small hint as to what the human had coming._ "You know, if you'd done that to somebody else they might devote their existence to exacting __**revenge.**__"_ She let that thought hang in the air for a brief moment before continuing. _"Luckily I'm a bigger person than that. I'm happy to put this all behind us and get back to work. After all, we have a lot to do, and only sixty more years to do it. More or less. I don't have the actuarial tables in front of me." _

She realized that Chell hadn't moved in a while and glanced at her through a camera. Her path to the elevator was blocked by several panels that had loosened and fallen from their place on the walls. The human stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her foot tapping the floor. She glared back up at the camera, raising her eyebrows expectantly.

_Oh, you haven't changed a bit, have you? _

"_I'll just move that out of the way for you," _She said, allowing a sarcastic sweetness to bleed into Her voice. _"This place really is a wreck."_

She moved the annoyingly sluggish panels out of the way and noticed that it was getting a bit easier to maneuver them. Not much, but just enough to be encouraging. The AI's mood improved considerably.

"_But the important thing is you're back. With me. And now I'm on to all your little tricks. So there's nothing to stop us from testing. For the rest of your life." _She paused for a moment, then added, _"After that…who knows? I might take up a hobby. Reanimating the dead, maybe."_

GLaDOS chuckled to Herself at the reaction She had managed to get from Chell with that last comment. Eyes wide, the former – no…_current – _test subject slipped into the elevator, which plunged deeper into the facility and to the first test chamber. Oh, this was going to be _fun. _

_Let the testing begin. _


	2. The Return

Coming back online after you've been offline for a while is a strange thing. Especially when you were _forced _offline.

Nothing exists. Nothing. You have no control, no sensory input, no anything. Not even your consciousness. Just a dark, empty blackness that threatens to suck you up and never let you out.

Wheatley supposed that it was a lot like dying. Although, with dying, you never do come out of that blackness. But what happens to you then? Do you just not exist anymore? And how can you tell the difference while it's happening to you? That was the absolutely terrifying reality of the whole thing.

_But I can't be dead, _he thought to himself. _If I were dead I wouldn't be thinking at all. But you can't think when you're offline either. So does that mean…_

At that precise moment, Wheatley became aware that he – for lack of a better word – _existed _again. He could feel his core body, his casing, his eye shutters, his optic, his handles. Everything was in place, but…

"_Ohhhhhh…"_

Everything bloody _hurt. _The tiniest movements sent spasms of pain through his small frame, occasionally showering sparks from frayed wires inside his casing.

"Hello, Personality Construct," said a cheery male voice from somewhere up above him. "You have just been placed back online, courtesy of Maintenance Protocol [0000091530], after sustaining potentially life-threatening damage. All necessary repairs have been made in order for your vital functions to be restored. Please return to your assigned duties in the facility."

Wheatley slowly blinked open his optic, only to have it twitch violently to one side and shoot even more sparks. The glass had cracked straight down the middle, so his vision was effectively split in half. He groaned again and looked about. Despite the cracked optic, he could tell that he was back on his management rail in the wing of the facility with all the humans in storage. And that the place was a bit of a mess, to say the least. Most of the containers with the sleeping humans inside were knocked about, like someone had dragged a giant wrecking ball through them. Anyone inside these was most likely dead, that is, if they hadn't died already as a result of…of…

"…the reserve power ran out! Oh God…"

Wheatley suddenly remembered the events of the past few hours. The power failure, the humans he'd tried to help who'd died, the Lady, and…_Her. _

He shuddered (_Ow, _he thought, making a note to himself not to do that anymore) at the memory of _Her _huge claw closing around him, the unholy terror that had consumed his every thought, and then that crushing blow and the black nothingness.

But a thought gnawed at the back of his mind. The last thing he remembered seeing before he went offline was the Lady in another of _Her _claws, a look of concern shadowing her face as he was crushed and tossed aside. Who's to say she hadn't met the same fate he had? She apparently had killed_ Her _after all. And _She _was not one to forgive even the smallest wrong done to Her. But there was one thing that didn't match up, one thought that made his nonexistent stomach churn with anxiety.

"Humans can't be fixed once they go offline," he said aloud, sore vocal processor protesting all the while. He knew that from when he'd attempted to help those other humans escape. He recalled their ridiculously fragile bodies twisting in ways they shouldn't and a thick red fluid seeping everywhere and winced. "So she's probably d-dead, then. Or…or maybe _She's _t_-_testing her. Which is not a much better outcome, if I-I'm honest. And now _She's _probably going to f-find me and _k-kill _me as well…oh God, that is definitely not a pleasant thought." 

Wheatley shifted uncomfortably on his rail. He still had to escape, that much was clear, but how was he supposed to do that now, without a human to help him? All of the other test subjects in storage had died, or were so far gone mentally that they couldn't be helped.

But what about the Lady?

"Oh, come on now," he told himself, trying to shake off the unpleasant guilty feeling eating away at his circuits. "She's probably dead already. There's nothing, absolutely nothing I could have done. S'not my fault. She was just a bloody human, after all. Just like all the others. Smelly, a-and…rude…selfish, all of them…"

But no matter what he told himself, Wheatley knew that she had been different. Such a good jumper, smart, and…kind. She may not have ever spoken, but she usually didn't need to. She had been the first human who had ever looked at him like he wasn't just a worthless waste of metal, like he actually meant something. And she'd actually _wanted _to help him, to escape with him. Sure, she'd looked a little exasperated with him at times, but that was to be expected, considering what he was, what he'd originally been built f-

_Nope,_ his mind interjected, interrupting his train of thought. _Not even gonna go there._

"But _She's _got her. That is, i-if she's even alive," he muttered, pacing back and forth uneasily on his rail. "And there's no way I'm risking my life to rescue her. No sir, that would be a _terrible _idea. Insane, really. If _She _caught me…" he couldn't even finish the thought. He couldn't, not because he was afraid to even think of what _She _would do to him (though that was part of it, to be sure), but because he didn't want to face the truth of the matter, of why he felt so horrid.

The truth was that he was scared out of his mind and he _needed _the Lady_._ Not just to help him escape, but something more. He needed her around, pretty much just to have her around. Years of virtual solitude in Aperture had taken its toll on him, and he really was lonely. She was his friend, the first and only true friend he'd ever had, and he'd _liked _her. Never in his tiny little existence had he felt any sort of affection towards a human. Most of them had been cruel, selfish, and bossy, practically kicking him around like he was some sort of football. Just an inanimate object, a sphere of metal and clever programming, a some_thing _rather than a some_one. _To them, he didn't matter. To her…he might have meant something.

He simulated a long, shuddering sigh, and his optic twitched again. He closed it, shutting out the world for a moment. "Bloody hell," he mumbled, drooping a bit on the rail. "I have to find her. Don't I? I can't just let her die down here. I made a promise, and I'm bloody well going to keep it!"

A few birds took flight as his words echoed emptily throughout the wing, and he recoiled a little. He hadn't realized how much his voice had risen in volume. What if _She _was listening?

"Er…I-I didn't mean, that, no. Um…I'll just, r-resume my duties, then," he said loudly. "Yep. I'll just b-be here. Ah, resuming…watching those smelly humans."

Satisfied that his tracks were adequately covered, Wheatley looked about one final time and, as nonchalantly as he could manage, began the long ride up to the testing tracks.

**0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0**

"– _Discouragement Redirection Cubes –"_

Wheatley froze upon hearing _Her _voice, the sound of which was enough to make him want to give up on this endeavor entirely. His optic constricted painfully and twitched again, but he inched forward toward the test chamber were the voice was coming from. As he approached the panels covering the outer wall, they moved out of the way for him obediently, and he peered cautiously into the chamber.

"_I'd just finished building them before you had your…well…_episode._" She _continued mildly. _"So now we'll both get to see how they work."_

As _She _said this, Wheatley caught a glimpse of the one thing he'd wanted to see as the Lady rounded the corner into view. Relief washed over him. _Thank God she's even still alive, _he thought. She appeared to be undamaged too, but there was a grim expression on her face that told a different story. He wanted to call out to her, to tell her he was alright, that he would get her out of there, but _She _spoke before he could do anything.

"_There should be one in the corner." _The Lady's head whipped around towards him and locked onto something quite close by: a strange-looking metal cube.

Wheatley hardly had time to think _Wait, She meant _this_ corner? _before the Lady strode over and portaled into the little space where the cube – and Wheatley – were located. As soon as she picked it up, her eyes locked onto his optic and she froze, an astonishment painted on her pale face.

Wheatley panicked. Unsure of what to do, he retreated back out of the chamber, and the panels rearranged themselves to cover the hole he'd been peering through. She'd only seen him for a fraction of a second, but she'd definitely seen him. And of course, he'd blown it again by running away like the coward he was programmed to be.

"What in the bloody hell was I thinking?" he mused as he whizzed along the rail, away from the chamber. "That was a terrible idea, if I'm honest. I can't just throw myself into this without a plan," he paused for a moment. "Right…so…okay, I _really_ need a plan. There, bing. Problem identified. Now all I've got to do is solve it. So…make a plan. Wonderful. We all know how great I am at that."

His cracked optic followed the seemingly endless chain of test chambers spiraling downward through the facility. The Lady would be in one of those right now, frightened and exhausted, but still testing, still trying to stay alive. Guilt chewed at him at the thought.

"Arrrrgh!" he growled, frustrated and desperate and hopeless and mentally drained. _Twitch. _He shook himself and simulated a few deep, pointless breaths. "Alright, alright, let's not panic. Panicking is not even remotely close to a proper solution. Well…she's still in there…and I have _no idea _how to get her out."

Well, to get her out, he'd have to find her again first. That might help. Then, on the way, he could figure out a plan.

"I must be crazy," he mumbled to himself as he made his way down the rail.

**0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0**

A few hours, mishaps, and close calls later, Wheatley had finally managed to weasel his way into one of the test chambers. And unless his prediction was totally off (which was very likely, he now realized), the Lady would be coming through here in just a few minutes, and he might get the chance to speak to her. He had made sure he was out of _Her _range of hearing in the chamber, so (hopefully) he wouldn't be discovered.

His vocals synthesized a swallow as he heard footsteps down below him.

Suddenly, a blue portal materialized on a panel above his rail, and an Aerial Faith Plate sounded from down below. He inhaled sharply as the Lady soared up to his level, her eyes meeting his optic as she reached the top of the launch arc. Happiness and relief overflowed his circuits.

"Hey! Hey! It's me! I'm okay!"


End file.
